All My Life | TAB
There’s plenty to memorise here before you start deciding which part to play and when. Let’s begin with the intro.
Intro + Verse 1
The intro and verse 1 feature that signature displaced chugging rhythm. At first, I thought it followed a 1/16th – 1/8th – 1/16th rhythmic cluster, just like chromatic exercise 13. But that’s not the case. The tempo is very fast and the pattern is actually made up entirely of 8th notes, like this:
Before the first instrumental section, we play a couple of harmonics on the 5th fret, strings 3 and 4. This trick returns later in the breakdown section, then on every other beat.
Verses 2 and 3 introduce a new riff. It’s very fast, so practise it slowly at first.
The drum pattern that inspired this part is a double kick drum figure, adapted here for guitar. Rather than writing the harmonic twice, I simply marked it as V3 harm to indicate that the harmonic from the end of verse 1 appears here as well.
Instrumental
The instrumental sections follow the same basic idea: a variation on the second verse riff. They differ mainly in length and small details.
Here’s the first one:
The second instrumental uses the same idea as the first line of instrumental 1.
The third instrumental is similar, but not identical to verse 2, and it finishes with the intro-style chugging.
Chorus
The chorus introduces new chords, beginning on IV. The harmony opens up with bigger chords and more extensions.
Before moving into instrumental 3, the final chords change slightly.
Breakdown
The breakdown presents a challenge: which part should you play as the sole guitarist? Here are guitar 1 and guitar 2 from the original recording.
If you remove the notes on the 5th string, you can combine the parts like this:
Later in the breakdown, there are big, sustained bends layered on top of the parts discussed above.
The real challenge is deciding how to combine these parts. The best approach is to learn all three, try the combined version, and experiment with what works best when playing with your band.
End
Nailing the ending of a song is what makes a band sound properly rehearsed. Here’s how it happens on the record.
Once you can play all this TAB, return to the chord chart, play along with the backing tracks to put the whole arrangement together.
All My Life Backing Tracks + TAB | Related Pages
All My Life | Chords + Lyrics
You can learn how to play All My Life by Foo Fighters using chords, lyrics, chord analysis, a chord chart, and the original recording.
| G5 | G5 |
All my life, I’ve been searching for something…
Five similar tunes | Chords + Lyrics
